Blog

The ABA Journal has a piece about “Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers” a new site that encourages ” law schools to experiment with interactive classes with the goal of producing more “practice-ready lawyers.”

Launched last week, Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers promotes innovative teaching with a new website to help educators learn from each other. The project is also planning conferences where law professors can share ideas.

Kourlis: Traditional law classes featuring a professor at a podium directing questions at students may work in the first year when students need to understand legal theory, but by the second and third years, there is a greater demand for law students to engage in a practical way with the material. What’s at stake is how these students will arrive on the first day of a job as bar-certified attorneys. … Law firms no longer have the time or money to give new hires on-the-job training. The clients recognize that time is money, and they know they’re paying for expertise from their counsel. Law classes must adapt to the changing needs of the profession. … The resolution adopted at the ABA’s House of Delegates meeting in Toronto in early August calling on law schools to incorporate more practical training into the curriculum is just one example of a recent wave of support backing major changes in legal education.

From the NY Law Journal:

On the heels of an American Bar Association commission vote to permit non-lawyers to hold a minority ownership role in law firms, Jacoby & Meyers on Friday fired broadside at a New York court rule barring firms from accepting outside investments.

The firm’s memorandum, which was submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District, comes in response to a motion filed earlier this summer by Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman.

Mr. Schneiderman is seeking dismissal of a suit Jacoby & Meyers lodged against the four presiding justices of the Appellate Division departments seeking to topple a court rule prohibiting non-lawyers from owning an equity interest in a law firm (NYLJ, May 20). The rule is designed to insulate attorneys and their firms from the explicit or implicit influence of non-lawyer investors.

In the weeks since Mr. Schneiderman filed a motion arguing that the Jacoby & Meyers’ suit “border[s] on frivolous” and that elimination of Rule 5.4 undermine attorney independence and loyalty to clients (NYLJ, July 26), the ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission circulated a proposed rule change to model Rule 5.4, on which New York’s court rule is based. The ABA panel would allow some “alternative business structures,” which are now barred in every U.S. jurisdiction outside the District of Columbia, and permit partial non-lawyer ownership of law firms.

In its filing Friday, Jacoby & Meyers contends the rule violates a host of constitutional provisions, is outmoded and ultimately harms law firms and its clients.

Yep, they argue the rule violates the void for vagueness doctrine, the dormant commerce clause, the due process clause, the equal protection clause, the takings clause, and the first amendment.

This is getting too easy. From the Times:

On Saturday, when the word was that Hurricane Irene had New York City in its sights, Mike Fenton was proud of himself: “I bought the last loaf of bread on the West Side.”

On Sunday, after the storm had delivered something less than a knockout punch to the city, his mood had changed. The two hours he had spent going to three grocery stores to find the bread? He really did not want to talk about it.

“With all the preparations and all the hoopla on TV, it was all for naught,” he said. “I feel embarrassed that we made such a to-do.”

Opportunity cost. Spending time (and money) waiting three hours on bread was time that could have been spent more productively.

“Around 2 p.m. on Saturday, the grocery stores were saying there was no more bread,” he said. Trader Joe’s — a specialty grocery store nearby — “had a line around the corner. That’s when business started to pick up. We had an extra number of delivery orders — pickups. As the day progressed, people were more and more desperate.”

Like Mr. Fenton, some who had put in their time on long lines had regrets. And the mayor was on their minds.

“Bloomberg, he did O.K., but he made people crazy and spend a lot of money,” said Franklin Rodriguez, a building superintendent on 44th Drive in Long Island City, Queens, just outside the Zone A low-lying evacuation area. He said he had spent $200 on supplies on Friday and $67 on a fill-up.

“Water, batteries, tuna fish, other food in a can,” he said. “For what? Believe me, people spent a lot of money on this. The tuna fish and the other food, O.K., we’re going to eat it. I don’t need all this water and batteries, though.”

Paying to fix the broken window rather than buying a suit. How about buying all these useless batteries instead of,  I don’t know, contributing to pay for rent.

More from David Boaz.

From a DC piece excerpting some quotes of how Cheney disagreed with President Bush about Heller, and ultimately signed an amicus brief supporting the D.C. Circuit’s opinion in Parker (as it was then known).

“The president never said a word to me about it,” Cheney wrote.

Cheney describes in his book that he staunchly disagreed with the administration’s Justice Department’s amicus brief not fully supporting the appeals court ruling on the issue. The administration argued that the ruling was too broad and asked the Supreme Court to send the case back to the lower courts.

“This stance seemed inconsistent with the president’s previous position on the second amendment and it was certainly inconsistent with my view,” Cheney wrote.

Therefore, Cheney, in 2008, in his capacity as president of the Senate and not vice president of the United States, signed an amicus brief with other members of Congress — after an aide for Republican Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison approached Cheney’s office — expressing support for the appeals court decision.

Not everyone in the West Wing was thrilled, Cheney recounts.

Bush’s chief of staff, Josh Bolten made it clear to Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington, that he “was not happy” about it. But Addington, Cheney wrote, responded that he works for the vice president and not the president’s chief of staff.

Cheney also wrote that others “around the West Wing seemed pleased. Barry Jackson, who had replaced Karl Rove as the president’s political adviser, said he was delighted to see that I had taken a firm position in support of the second amendment.”

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to Cheney, also later joked that the court was unsure how to rule until “the vice president’s brief showed up.”

That last bit is quite odd, and I’m sure will reinforce claims that Nino should have recused in that case involving Cheney.

Before Irene, I announced a Krugman Alert:

Let’s see if the Keynesian Nobel Laureate at the Times writes some column how the (potential, hopefully negligble) damage caused by Hurricane Irene on New York City is a positive event it will create spending and benefit the economy.

During the store, I commented on broken windows.

It seems the storm petered out, so I will quote Larry Ribstein (on facebook):

Irene was less bad than expected. I imagine the market will go down tomorrow. Not enough broken windows for Krugman.

Update: An estimate of the damage:

Irene may cost insurers as much as $3 billion to cover U.S. damage, with overall economic losses of $7 billion, according to Kinetic Analysis Corp., which predicts disaster impact. The U.S. suffered $35 billion in losses in nine separate events so far in 2011, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, tying a record for disasters causing more than $1 billion damage in a single year.

Update: From Freakonomics, on the media’s “overkill”

But here’s where I blame the media. Rather than admitting on Sunday that the storm had simply not been so bad, the New York City media was way too eager to join in on the fray, don its rain jacket, and get its disaster yahs-yahs out. While there is clearly a danger in under-estimating the risk of events, there are also negative consequences in trumping up the damages of an event that ultimately, wasn’t all that damaging. To me, Sunday’s all-day reporting blitz was classic overkill, and ultimately undermines the local TV media’s credibility to be able to tell me when something matters, and when it doesn’t.